Sunday, January 29, 2012

Dial-Up Tour!!!!!!!

So on Friday I went to the Chicago stop on the Dial-Up Tour. I had a lot of fun, and I took a lot of pictures.

The show opened with Olan Rogers.

I'll be honest. I'm still not sure who this guy is, but he was very funny anyway. He told a few stories about his childhood, and I was crying with laughter a little bit.

Next up were Shawna and Tessa, or Nanalew and Meekakitty.

They opened with the song, "Space Crustaceans". Again, I'd never heard this song before, but it was entertaining and a great way for them to start their set. They did some comedy things and sang two more songs.  One was "Lizards Scratching at the Car Door, They Want to Come In".

Apparently it's a metaphor for their lives. They ended with their pop hit. Now, when they first started talking about the song, I thought it was called "Dirty Hipster No No's". Then they started singing it and I though it was good, but wondered when they would start giving out the no no's. Then they starting singing about how they would cut off the hipster's nose and I realized the song was actually called "Dirty Hipster No Nose." It was still a great song, the miscommunication just made it a little surprising.


Now, I've mentioned about twice now how I appreciated that even though I don't watch Olan Rogers, or Tessa or Shawna, I still had a lot of fun during their sets. I'm sure there were some jokes I missed by not watching them, but overall I had fun. I say this to provide contrast to the next group, LiveLavaLive, or Mitchell and Kyle.

Now, I want to be clear, they were very funny, and I still had fun, but their act was longer than the others (or at least felt that way) and I felt a little left out of some jokes. For example, they had a video montage of other recurring characters performing bits of their sketches. Very funny if you've seen the sketches, less so if you haven't.

One part that was sort of in between being inclusive to all and exclusive to fans was when they invited someone up to join them in performing one of their better known sketches live.

I had fun watching the sketch, and a real fan got to interact with them.


Next up was the real reason I'd come, the final act, Jason Munday and Alex Carpenter!!!!


They started with the songs "Start of Something" and "Internet Age", from their EP, "Dial-Up". There was a trock song, "Bowties are cool", and a wrock song, "Lovegood". They played "The Coast" and "Wonderland", also from their new EP, as well as "Ready for Anything" (Star Wars song). They ended with the last song from their new EP, "Bacon Song", and were joined by Tessa.

And then they were joined by the rest of the tour group.


After the show, everyone came out and I was able to meet Jason and Alex. And take pictures with them.



So that was my Friday night. I had an amazing time. Also, funny story. When I showed my ticket to get in the bouncer-man-guy asked me if I was 21. Immediately I panicked and said, "I thought this was an all ages show." He responded by informing me that it was all ages, but that he still needed to know if I was 21. I told him no, and was sent in without a hand stamp. I just found it funny that he couldn't figure out that when my reaction is to panic, I'm probably not 21.

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Busy Week

I have so much going on this week, it's amazing, but stressful.

On Sunday I went ice skating on the outdoor rink built by student government (a picture of the rink is available in my last post), with some friends.

Today my dorm hosted a "fireside". The Rabbi from Hillel came and spoke to us about being a Jewish ghostbuster. It was a really interesting talk and I feel like I learned a lot about the Jewish views on ghosts, angels, ect.

Thursday there's a Q+A about the liberal arts requirements for engineering students at my school and an info session about career mentoring that night.

Friday night I'm going to the Chicago stop on the Dial-Up tour. 

Add into all this my need to do all my homework. Of the six things I have due between Thursday and Friday, I have one completely done, two halfway done and three not even started. So, I'm going to get back to work.

Saturday, January 21, 2012

Doodling and Snow

This post is mostly pictures.
I've been working on a doodle lately. I spent some time last night coloring it.







Today I walked around my school campus and took some pictures of what it looks like covered in snow. This is also a little bit of a tour of my campus.

The view from my window.

The building next to my dorm in which all my classes take place.

Churchy looking building near my dorm.

A different churchy building. I think this is actually the theology school.

Deering Meadow and Deering library. It's the old pretty library.

The administrative buildings for the non-engineering departments are in these beautiful houses on campus. It makes me sad that the engineering department offices are all in the tech building where I have my classes.

The arch.

I honestly don't know what this building is but it's pretty.

The rock, painted with paint and snow.

The new, not as pretty library.

Some pretty art and the main music auditorium.

Another cool piece of art.

Norris, the main student center. I stopped off and got a hot chocolate.

The outdoor ice rink at Norris.

The lake, all frozen and pretty.

More pretty buildings.

The gym is in the background but I liked this shot.

And full circle back to my dorm!
Hope you liked the pretty pictures!

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Knitting Update

A little while ago I lost my winter coat, and with it my hat and scarf, that I had knit. I've since gotten a new coat. While at first I was very disappointed to have lost my hat and scarf, especially considering the amount of work I put into them, I decided to take advantage of the situation.

First I knit myself a new hat.

The hat, as well as my left knee.
It's a Jayne hat. For those of you who don't watch Firefly, that probably means nothing. For those of you do watch Firefly, isn't it awesome? There are a lot of patterns online, I used one that I found on ravelry, though I don't remember which one.

My scarf is still a work in progress. I've long wanted to make myself a Harry Potter scarf and decided to finally go ahead and do it. I'm doing it with Ravenclaw colors. I'm not sure what I'll do if Pottermore (should the rest of us ever be allowed on) sorts me elsewhere, but I'll figure it out when I need to.

The scarf, as well as parts of my legs.
For those of you wondering, I decided to use blue and bronze, as those are the colors of Ravenclaw in the books, as opposed to blue and silver, which are the colors in the movies. I also decided to make a scarf in the style of the later movies because I like that pattern better. I'm using a technique called double knitting, which is why it is blue with bronze stripes on one side, but bronze with blue stripes on the other. And to anyone who says that it looks orange, not bronze, you try finding bronze yarn! That's what I thought.

I think I prefer the blue as the main color a little better, but both sides look nice. It'll be a while until I finish, although it's coming along nicely. I'll do another update when I finish the scarf.

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Funny College Stories (3)

Apparently I have the habit of saying things a little too loudly.  This can lead to embarrassing situations, especially in the dining hall.

1. One of my friends got up to get ice cream and came back with coffee flavored ice cream. She told me  told me the other flavors, including chocolate chip. I went over to get ice cream and discovered that the chocolate chip was actually mint chocolate chip. After my friend finished her ice cream she was debating going and getting more so that she could have mint chocolate chip. It is the responsibility of a college freshman to help keep friends from overeating, because dining halls will convince you that you can eat more than you truly can and make you regret it. I decided to do my part to talk her out of it. However, there's no way to convince someone to not eat mint chocolate chip ice cream. So I chose to blatantly lie to her.

"There's no more mint chocolate chip."

She looked at me with (reasonable) disbelief and pointed over to a guy holding a bowl of mint chocolate chip walking to the table behind us.

"He just got some, so clearly there's some left."

"He took the last of it. Hate him!" That was the part said a little bit too loud. He clearly hear me and turned to stare at us for the rest of dinner.

2. There's a boy in my dorm who plays his music very loudly, causing me to constantly ask him to turn it off or down. He isn't always so great about doing so. As a result, it's become a bit of a recurring joke among my friends and I that this boy and I hate each other. I was having dinner with the friend from above and he walked by. I interrupted my friend.

"Hang on I have to glare at [name]."I don't know if he heard everything I said, or just heard me say his name, but he stopped, turned and went "what?"

So, yeah, maybe I need to watch the volume when I make lame jokes.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Getting Excited

I've made it clear in the past that I like snow. As a result this winter has been very disappointing for me, as I have not really had the experience of snow so far. BUT! I was looking at weather.com today and I saw that snow is predicted to start tomorrow night, and continue through Thursday, with flurries on Friday and Saturday. But it get's better!

THERE'S A SPECIAL WEATHER ALERT ABOUT IT GETTING COLD AND SNOWING!!!!!! You know it's going to be good when weather.com issues a special alert about the snow we're going to get. Yes I realize I have once again demonstrated that I do not react the same way about things as other people. I realize that most people don't get this excited about snow (thought they should) and probably view special weather alerts as bad things (normally I'd agree on that one, but SNOW!). All I can say is that I'm really excited for snow. The smell of it, the sound it makes when I walk across it, but most of all the beauty that is looking out the window and seeing everything look clean and pretty.

I'm also excited that the timing works out that it won't start snowing until after I have to walk into town tomorrow to speak to my cell phone company. As much as I love walking in snow, I think it's a little nicer when you get to choose to walk in it, not when you have to. Especially if you have to walk longish distances.

So any, the point of the story is that I'm going to get snow!!!!

Saturday, January 7, 2012

Math Class is Tough

Back in 1992, Mattel released a line of "Teen Talk Barbies". They were designed with a chip that could say 4 phrases from a total of 270 possible phrases. "Let's go shopping!" and "Wanna have a pizza party?" are some sample phrases. One phrase however, greatly upset the American Association of University Women. "Math class is tough." Only about 1.5% of the dolls said this phrase, but that was too many as far as groups were concerned so Mattel removed the phrase and offered trade-ins on the dolls with the offending sentence.



Where this story gets entertaining, to me at least is that some groups decided to send a different message. The voice chips of some Barbies, were switched with the voice chips of some GI Joes so that boys received tough burly dolls asking "Will we ever have enough clothes?" and some girls received Barbies that discussed fighting Cobra.

Now, I fully support the idea behind this act. It sickens me when I see a toy store divided into "boy" toys and "girl" toys. I think kids should be free to play with whatever toys they find fun. I also agree with the women who protested the doll for implying that girls are bad at math. However I think that this sends that message far more than a doll saying "Math class is tough." After all, maybe Barbie is so good at math that she's in an advanced multi-variable calculus class. Maybe Barbie is capable of doing the work, but wants it acknowledged that the work she's doing in difficult. Maybe I should stop procrastinating and finish my math homework. My really tough math homework.

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

First Day of Classes (Winter 2012 Edition)

As a student in a school that uses the quarter system, today was my first day of Winter Quarter. It did not start well, but then it got better.

I had a lot of trouble getting to sleep last night. Eventually though I awoke and discovered it was past 9 AM, the time when my alarm clock was supposed to go off. I was understandably concerned and asked my roommate if it had gone off. She informed me that it had not because I had forgotten to plug my iPod into it. Then I woke up for real and discovered that it was around 8:45 AM, my roommate was asleep and I had been dreaming. I went into the dozing state. After a little while I looked at my watch and discovered it was 9:05. My alarm really hadn't gone off. Then I remembered that I had changed my alarm from 9 to 9:15. I lay in bed, somewhat nervous, somewhat sleepy until my alarm went off at the correct time.

I then got up and went about my morning routine before heading to class. I got there just as the previous class was exiting, that is to say, 10 minutes early. Strangely, there were only about 6 of us in the room. Someone pulled out her phone and checked online. Apparently, the room had been changed. It was now 1 minute until class. Luckily, I got there on time and found a seat quickly.

This is where my day started to improve. I had not bought any textbooks yet, except for my chemistry book as it was also the book used last quarter in chemistry. I had looked online at some of my books and was prepared to buy them once the teacher confirmed that they were the right books. Sure enough my math teacher had a slide featuring the math book. He then went on to tell us that he didn't like it and that we really wouldn't need it, so there was no need to buy it.

My next class I went to I learned that I would need to buy it, and since this was the first year they were using a school specific version of the text, I would have to buy it new from the school bookstore. However, my teacher made it clear very quickly why he's a sought after professor so at least there's that.

Next class was chem where I already had the book. The teacher was also very good and made a flying spaghetti monster reference, so yay.

Finally I had my last class. The bookstore website had listed 1 book for the class. During his introductory lecture to us, my professor told us we'd need three books. Then he let us know that they were available for free online and that he would have links to the relevant material.

Basically I only had to buy one textbook (though I did have to buy it new). So far this year is off to a great start.